We use California Rice. The California Rice Board is very, very strict. The farms that grow rice do NOT want any stray, rogue, GMO rice in their state. I must say that there are currently no GMO rice crops in the US, yet. They are experimenting with it though and that’s a concern.

California Rice Farmers are protecting their investment, their crops, as well as our interests. The farmers who grow our rice have been around for generations. Koda Farms is California’s oldest family owned and operated rice farm. They have worked the land since the 1920s. That was way back before we started poisoning our crops. That was in the old days when cows grazed in pasture land, seafood was sustainable because back then, fishermen inherently understood that if you fished out an area, it wouldn’t come back, you could only buy local produce and there was no such thing as a GMO. Koda Farms is a certified, organic facility. Check out their website. There’s a section on the hysteria of arsenic in rice. Jeeze Louise! Some cultures (mine is one of them) have been eating rice for thousands of years and have lived long, healthy lives.

Did you know there’s more naturally occurring arsenic in brown rice than in white? Did you know that most arsenic washes out when you wash rice before you cook it?

The Italians have their risottos, the Mediterraneans have paella, the Brazilians have feijoada, their national dish of which rice is one of the four main components, Russians have kulebiaki, Persians have chelow, Indians/Asians have rice as their main staple. The list is endless.

Why now, are Americans freaked out about rice? Who says rice has empty calories? Who are we to judge what people eat and tell them that a food that they’ve been eating for centuries, is now bad?